This one's difficult to pick, and while I expect Super Mario Kart to win, I don't think it's anywhere close to the best game of 1992. In general this feels like a year of good games in series that have almost all seen better ones. I suppose I'll give this one to Contra 3, with FFV, Sonic 2, and Streets of Rage II right behind it.

Looking ahead at 1993, PC literally exploded in great games, Doom, Myst, Day of the Tentacle, Star Wars X-Wing, Master of Orion and so many others, heavy hitters in all genres. But it will probably go to Links Awakening by default, if not Super Mario all stars.

Oh The lost Vikings was 1992, incorrectly listed on Abandonware as 1993. I loved that game, a precursor to Trine.
Very clever level design, all round great puzzle platformer.


Ultima was great as well, hard to keep up with the series though lol. And yeah point & click adventures moved ahead at rapid pace.
1992 also saw the release of Might and Magic IV, clouds of xeen. The game that got me into the Might and Magic series, although I didn't play it until 1997.

Oh, 1992 is so full of potential, a lot of which will be realized in 1993.

Ultima Underworld and Wolf3D both massive steps towards 3D gaming. Doom popularized this, but Wolf3D layed out already the engine basics and Underwolrd similarly did this for a completely different gameplay genre.

Mario Kart and Kirbys Dreamland both were starting points of incredibly great series. In case of Mario Kart one that had a lot of clones, so it can be seen as genre-defining (the genre of Mario Kart likes).

I heard Ur-Quan masters is a great strategy game, but never played it myself, maybe should remedy this.

Alone in the Dark was a revolution in setting a horror feel and very much inspired Resident Evil.

Dune 2 basically was the blueprint for the oncoming storm of real time strategy games that followed.

Also shoutout to Indiana Jones, I just love these LucasArts adventures.

So yeah, a lot of series starting points and even genre starting points. This is great. We will see how 1993 popularized a lot of these ideas presented here.

EDIT: I voted for Ultima: Underworld before seeing what else was in the year but not in the poll, and I think from impact and also fun factor Wolf3D should have my vote.

If 1992 goes to Mario Kart and 1993 goes to Link's Awakening or Mario All-Stars we should just change the name of these threads from "Game of the Year" to "Nintendo Game of the Year"

1993 would go to Mana or Phantasy Star IV for me.

It will get also more PS-titles, once historically PS starts gearing up. The truth is this site is heavily console-biased, so PC, phone or arcade games come with an disadvantage at these polls. Insofar it is more surprising how well some PC games hold up in comparison in some of these year polls.

No doubt FF7 will likely dominate.

This is a difficult year. Not really anything that changed a genre or anything. Well maybe Super Mario Kart, but Im not a big fan of the first one. Ill go with Contra 3. Best Contra game imo.

I don’t terribly care about any of these so I’ll give it to Ultima Underwold for its influence on immersive sims. Streets of Rage 2 should also have gotten a spot though.